“Did I fire! Didn’t ye hear a crack? Didn’t ye see the thing fall? Look yonder!”
Garey, as he spoke, pointed up to the bird.
“We must have fired simultaneously.”
As the Indian said this he appealed to his gun, which was still smoking at the muzzle.
“Look hyar, Injun! whether we fired symultainyously, or extraneously, or cattawampously, ain’t the flappin’ o’ a beaver’s tail to me; but I tuk sight on that bird; I hut that bird; and ’twar my bullet brought the thing down.”
“I think I must have hit it too,” replied the Indian, modestly.
“That’s like, with that ar’ spangled gimcrack!” said Garey, looking disdainfully at the other’s gun, and then proudly at his own brown weather-beaten piece, which he had just wiped, and was about to reload.
“Gimcrack or no,” answered the Indian, “she sends a bullet straighter and farther than any piece I have hitherto met with. I’ll warrant she has sent hers through the body of the crane.”
“Look hyar, mister—for I s’pose we must call a gentleman ‘mister’ who speaks so fine an’ looks so fine, tho’ he be’s an Injun—it’s mighty easy to settle who hut the bird. That thing’s a fifty or tharabouts; Killbar’s a ninety. ’Taint hard to tell which has plugged the varmint. We’ll soon see;” and, so saying, the hunter stepped off towards the tree on which hung the gruya, high up.
“How are you to get it down?” cried one of the men, who had stepped forward to witness the settlement of this curious dispute.